Kim Possible Jaeger
by Absentialuci
Summary: WORK IN PROGRESS - Set in the future, Joss is turned loose on a world with which she has no practical experience. This is still very much a work in progress, but go ahead and read and review if you feel like it. All comments, suggestions welcome.
1. Chapter 1 The Death of Ashland

_"The most promising acolyte left us, not out of the lesser folly of sentiment, but the greater folly of anger. Her heart was clouded, and her balance was lost, but her abilities were unmatched. Even then, we knew to watch her most carefully." –_**Inquisitor Amital, The Holy Roman Catholic Church**

**Chapter 1: the death of Ashland and the entrance of Joss**

I.

A pregnant chunk of cerebellum fell from the lackadaisically spinning blades of the fan overhead and landed in a half-empty tumbler of scotch, millions of brain cells dying in the ethanol. Blood and other bodily fluids navigated the drain trough of the bar before forming a waterfall of viscera at the far end and splattering into the drain set in the tile floor below. A woman and her lover sat in the corner booth locked in a tender embrace, the gaping wound in the back of her head having scattered her blonde hair and punched through and down to exit her boyfriends throat, the offending bullet finally having lodged itself in the wooden back of the booth bench. Blood and brains pooled in the plates set before the two of them and spackled the hard-used table. Shards of bone sailed in the pools of gore.

_The piano player ran for the door as I stepped inside, gun barrels preceding me. I winked at him before tenderly squeezing the dual triggers. My pistols went off like a compressed thunderclap, dust and petals of ash jarring loose from the ceiling above and sprinkling down like black rain as the player's ribcage smashed open. Stepping over him, I walked further into the bar. _

_The serving wench tried to hide behind an overturned table in the far corner of the room, her tray of ale dumped on the floor in her haste to get away. She didn't. A single large caliber slug ripped through the burnished wood and iron of the table like a Mack truck with an inferiority complex. She was flung forward and into the wall, her right arm gone at the shoulder, a scream tearing from her throat as her stump waved frantically, circumscribing a burgundy flag of blood through the air. I finished her with my knife, standing over her and spearing through her chest and into the heart, letting the beating muscle slash itself to ribbons on the steel. _

_Throughout it all the barkeeper watched, aghast. He was still polishing the same glass that he had been when I entered, the mottled rag in his hand not so much cleaning as making sure the dirt was evenly spread. The chalice shattered as he seized violently in his death throes, a tunnel having appeared in the center of his body. The rest of the people in the saloon followed shortly after, killed with my guns, my knife and the last two with my bare hands. When it was over, I stood in the center of the bar, pistols at my sides breathing smoke and contentment with equal measure. _

Gideon allowed a smile to sketch itself onto his lips as he poured another three fingers of whiskey. Around him death in all its multi-sensual glory lay across everything like a smothering blanket; to him it felt more like a womb, a place where he was always comfortable. They, the folk of this town, had all deserved the medicine he had given them; they had had the nerve to question his intentions for visiting their ass-end-of-nowhere town. Even before his exile he had never done well with questions, and the answers he gave always seemed to be what people never wanted to hear.

_I was met at the outskirts of the town by what passed for the law in these parts. He was a tall man, fit and lean, his blonde hair cropped short and with a face lined from years of squinting into the sun. He wore beat-up jeans, long since faded to a bleached not-blue, with trail worn boots and a friendly smile that seemed to be sandblasted into his face. A silver star was displayed proudly on his white dress shirt. I decided that I didn't like him. We exchanged pleasantries and salutations, he with words and I shortly thereafter with 180-grains of copper-jacketed lead and a healthy dislike for authority. The crack of the gunshots rolled away from me and down the hill into town, announcing my arrival. I slid my pistols back into their holsters, and walked down the hill towards the town , whistling merrily. _

_The folk of the village rushed at me when I reached the main thoroughfare, the street itself being home to shops, homes and even streetlights; I idly wondered if they worked still or if that technology had been lost to these folk. They had all been armed with makeshift weapons: farm tools, pieces of wood, even rocks. Their attack abruptly changed direction as I placed bullet after bullet into their numbers, each squeeze of the trigger adding a period at the end of someone's life story. My fingers moved of their own accord, flicking open the expended chambers of my revolvers and walking fresh cartridges from my belt into the six-shot breech before spinning the cylinders closed and continuing the gunplay. Expended casings loitered around my feet._

_They screamed and hollered as they ran to get away, their voices rising and falling in a chorus of the damned, the sounds of their terror and pain growing thinner as angry hornets of copper and lead claimed half again their number. I looked around, temporarily put out by the lack of things to kill. Starting at a hand's breadth from my toes and extending back seventy paces had been a drunken scrawl of bodies, arrayed end to end like a perverse parody of a conga line. The dirt in the street had been muddy with blood._

_Those who escaped the slaughter watched through the squinting shutters of stores and homes to either side of me. I stooped to picked up the used bullet cases lying in the dirt at my feet and tucked them neatly into a small leather drawstring bag hanging from my belt. Looking around, I started to whistle again, low and tuneless, as I began to go from house to house and store to store, showing the folk of Ashland they should've remembered why hospitality and good manners are so important in days such as these. _

Gideon scratched the inside of his thigh, plucking free the tie of his chaps that had become caught on a hook in the material of his jeans. They had been a gift, once, the chaps; bright and clean, they're now creased and worn, dirt blasted into every pore of the material. He smiled as he reflected on how his clothes reflected the changes in his own fortune over the intervening years. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a pack of cigarettes, tapping it on the counter. A match appeared in between his fingers, a sleight of hand trick for no audience. He looked at the phosphorous head a moment before he raked it across the sandpaper strip nailed to the back of the bar, enjoying the sound of it popping into flames. Hanging the cigarette over the lit match head, he watched until the end of the cigarette transmuted to embers and then stuck it between his lips. Gideon leaned back in the stool and inhaled deeply, allowing himself to enjoy the taste as it flooded into his lungs. He wasn't concerned; he knew that when his time does come, his death wouldn't be from cancer.

He exhaled slowly and shot gunned the last of his whiskey. The last vestiges of sunlight beyond the single-pane window cavorted through the half-melted ice in his glass and cast a fractured rainbow on the far wall.

_The last people left alive in Ashland were a mother and her daughter who sought shelter in the corner of the general store off the main street. The sign hanging above the door declared that GUNS, AMMO AND PROVISIONS could be had for REASONABLE PRICES! I saw the mother as soon as I entered; a tuft of dirty blonde hair visible above the barrels of flour and wheat hastily pulled in front of them. I walked up to them and watched the emotions dance across their faces, my shadow draping over them as the beginnings of a smile jumped from the corners of my mouth. The daughter hid her face in her mother's blouse, tiny fists pulling the material like taffy as her mother clutched her with fierce desperation. Looking at me, the mother tried to talk, but her voice hitched in her throat. Finally, she had mouthed the word "Why?" _

_I thought about it for a second as I examined a knothole slightly above her head. Outside, a dog barked forlornly. I lowered my pistols after a moment, and motioned for them both to leave. The mother didn't moved at first, eyeing me warily through narrowed eyes. I motioned again, letting impatience paint my face. The mother scrambled out of their hiding place, one hand shifting to hold her daughter's butt so she could smooth down the back of her dress, and ran for the yawning wooden door. She was crossing through the doorframe when I unloaded all twelve chambers of my pistols into their backs. _

_Moving behind the glass counter, I pulled out a box of shells, a swooping eagle printed on the side of the stamped cardboard. The rectangular box was dog-eared and yellowed with age, but the bullets were still good. Sliding the smooth brass shells into the empty divots in the belt slung on my waist, I walked out of the store and back towards the bar, already drinking the new-found silence of the town around me._

* * *

II.

A throat cleared itself behind him. Gideon pivoted in the barstool, hands' dipping for his pistols. The revolvers were already clear and questing for a target when he saw her, and drew up short. Leaning against the wall across from him, on the far side of the saloon from the counter, was a girl. Cloaked in the onyx gaze of the encroaching night, she was a shadow in a shadow. A few of the rusted streetlights beyond the saloon window, sounding like dying insects, buzzed and hummed suddenly, driving the darkness surrounding her back into the wall and stripping her of her anonymity.

She was young, not more than twenty-one, but well developed. Her dark blue chaps accentuated her long, muscular legs, drawing his eye towards the flaring hips just visible above her pant line and the to the tight waist beyond. A hint of her stomach was visible, exposing cut abs softened by a thin layer of fat. A gun belt hung from the wings of her hips, an ornately wrought pearl handle of an exotic-looking pistol poked out of a leather holster. The rest of her was swaddled in a shallow-necked black shirt, the sleeves of which stopped just past her elbows. Her arms were well-built, but not overly, with a fine tattooing of sinew and muscle tracing delicate patterns beneath her mocha-colored skin. A shock of white hair laid in waves about her shoulders and framed her face. She reached up as Gideon watched and tucked one of the rogue bands of hair behind her ear with long, graceful fingers. Turing away, she sidled over to the bar and sat down, poking the dead bartender with a child-like curiosity.

As the shadows of the early evening leapt and stretched across her face, Gideon noticed her eyes for the first time. The left one was augmentic, a man-made replacement for the real thing, all lenses, steel and pale-green glow. A border of bright metal followed the orbit of her eye, marking where the natural melded with the synthetic. The dual lenses of the eye cycled slowly, one inside of the other as she stared at him, her face an inscrutable blank. Augmentics were increasingly rare, created now by only master artificers or found in stockpiles of lost Technoarcana. It was rumored that they hadn't been unusual, back Before the Fall, and the fact that this young girl had such an artifact spoke more about her resources and influence than anything else could have. It was also one of the sole reasons he restrained himself from adding her to Ashland's burgeoning obituary. The other eye was wholly unremarkable, being a rich sea green color.

Gideon circled cautiously away from the girl, holstering one of his pistols and cocking the hammer back on the other, aiming it surreptitiously at her forehead. She had stopped playing with the deceased bartender and was now leaned down low over the bar, casually drawing runes into its cruor-covered surface with a finger. Her hand ducked and weaved as her finger carved canyons and valleys into the half-dried blood and gore, the artificial landscapes resolving themselves into symbols and syllabary with a graceful, practiced ease. To Gideon's eyes, the symbols almost looked like High Speak, but it had been years since he'd seen it used; it was impossible. He dismissed the idea. With her attention so diverted, Gideon could feel some of his bravado returning to him.

With a thumb hooked into an eyelet of his jeans, Gideon walked closer to the girl and leaned down to look her in the eyes. The butt of the cocked pistol rested on the counter, his finger wrapped around the trigger as he let the barrel tap a gentle rhythm against her forehead. Through the fringe of her hair, she watched him. Satisfied that he had her undivided attention and control of the situation, Gideon poured a dollop of humor into his face. "It's not often someone walks up to me unannounced, girl, or at least not without a dozen armed men and a lascannon."

He sneered, hazel eyes glittering in the hard-used fluorescent light pouring in from outside. The girl continued to observe him from behind her curtain of hair, augmentic lenses tracing the lines of his face with studious curiosity, but no fear. The oblivion of her other eye remained hidden. As the seconds dragged on and the night settled in to stay, Gideon grew impatient. He grabbed her chin, the rough calluses on the tips of his fingers, still singed with the circles of shell casings from the slaughter earlier that afternoon, brushed along the polished marble of her face. He was intent on forcing an answer out of her, or maybe just wanted to hurt her a little; not even he knew for sure which it was. She drew her face back and brushed aside his hand, standing back from the bar while throwing her mane of hair back behind her head. In the back glow of the streetlights she appeared ethereal and haunting, a specter of times long past and things better left forgotten.

"Patience doesn't appear a virtue for you; that is fine. I am Joss. You are Gideon Tomas Sanchez, born on November 21, 2149 and wanted for the suspected murder of numerous innocents, as well as the depopulation of nine towns throughout the Greater Eastern Ward." Her voice, quiet and soft but brusque and formal, trickled past his ears like pillow-talk as she continued to stare at him with polite inscrutability, "Additionally, you now have a…rather incredible bounty on your head, announced last week by Viceroy Michaels."

"And you're here to try and collect, girl? Better men than you have tried." He spat the words between the Chiclets of his teeth, hoping to drive her off with contempt. She didn't flinch.

"No, I'm here because of you, Gideon, not for you," she flashed him an indulgent smile as she sat down and straddled one of the barstools, resting her chin on the backrest, "A Praetorian of the fallen House of Lucre, brought low enough to now be one of the most hunted men in all of the Greater Eastern Ward." She paused, one arm stretching across the gulf between them to let her dexterous fingers trace the cross-hatched scar on the side of his neck.

"There has never been one quite like you. You have done great things, Gideon, great but terrible, and to this end I have sought you out. I am no stranger to violence; I have had blood on my hands since I was five, but such dealings have always been handled by an intermediary, always done by my word but never my own hand. If I am to fulfill my purpose and place then I should, mayhap, learn the ways of such things in person." As she finished speaking she spread her arms out to her sides, palms facing upwards. For a moment, the only sound in the saloon was the wind gusting beyond the solitary window.

Gideon stared at her as his mind chewed over the cud of her purpose. The spasmodic streetlights caused the halo of her white hair to flicker randomly. "So you are a Noble, then. I suspected as much; no peasant has access to augmentics. Tell me why I shouldn't just sell you to the slavers? Noble-flesh would make me unseemly rich." He slipped his revolver back into its holster as his voice rasped out in a half-challenge. She looked up at him, a crooked half-smile hanging from her lips.

"There's little point in denying it: I am a Noble. As for why you shouldn't sell me off? The reasons are legion. Should I be in your company, opportunities that may be currently barred from you would be open; be they respectable jobs, killing, whatever you desire." She pushed herself off the barstool and started to pace back and forth on the rough-shod floor. The spurs on her boots rattled like loose change. "Additionally, Gideon Sanchez, should you choose to suffer my company, I can guarantee you a measure of immunity against prosecution from the law. Lastly, you need me."

These last words caused him to step back from the bar, one hand re-drawing his pistol while the other hung down and loose near the sweat-polished nickel grip of his other weapon, "And just how do you figure that, miss?" The threat in the words didn't even bother to try and hide itself.

"The way your fingers shake as you reload your pistols. The way you draw at an inward stroke to hide the infirmity growing in your hands. The Progenitors called it 'arthritis,' Gideon. It happens." She shrugged, muscled shoulders rolling under the tight material of her shirt.

"Oh, you are clever. And you think that because I may have begun to slow down I won't end you? Clever, but foolish. Mayhap I should do the thing just because you know this about me…?" The revolver nodded its agreement in his hand.

"Unwise. While I hate to resort to such contrite arguments for my life such as 'if you kill me, my family will…,' in this case it's particularly apt. The sole reason you haven't been run down by Regulators or been the recipient of an Assassin's bullet is because I wished to make this offer to you. Should you reject it," the cocksure grin still played over her lips, "then my protection is withdrawn and you'll be dead, most likely never having seen your killer, within a fortnight. I may be dead, but you'll be joining me before too long."

Gideon re-holstered his revolver and pursed his lips. Intellectually, he knew she was right. With what he had been doing lately, one of the Great Houses should have moved on him by now. Crushing a murderer like him was a good way to garner favor from the Church, after all, and favor with the Church was a currency accepted everywhere. He glanced at her. Even with her life in the balance she wasn't concerned; instead, she was intent on draining the last of the whiskey from the abandoned bottle he had left on the counter.

Gideon laughed, a harsh guttural sound not unlike the cough of a consumptive bull. Joss's shoulders relaxed slightly. "Alright, girl, you can tag along with me. I'm headed to Eastwood, on the far side of the Malibu Desert. I was going there for provisions; this shithole doesn't have what I need, aside from ammo." Gideon lowered his face to hers, their foreheads touching as he stared into her eyes, both of them. "However, you are to keep quiet unless I speak to you, and for the love of the man-Jesus, cover that augmentic. You'll attract attention like a whore attracts disease, and attention is one thing I do not wish to have."

* * *

III.

As they rode out of the town limits of Ashland on the horses Joss had found in a stable behind the general store, Gideon glanced at her sidelong.

"The real reason I took you wasn't because of your arguments, girl. It was because you have some real backbone. Not many rise to meet a challenge, or will confront danger; they instead to choose to hide and save their own skins. But you didn't. That's impressive…for a Noble."

Undetectable next to him save for the clomping hoof beats of her mount, Joss's smile split the night.


	2. Chapter 2 The Instruction of Joss

"_All knowledge is stored somewhere, be it in books, heads or deep under glaciers. And when we find it, we make it ours. Faith is bricks; knowledge is mortar."_ **- Ecclesiarch Augustine XIV, The Holy Roman Catholic Church**

**Chapter 2: The instruction of Joss**

_"The records on how the Great War started are lost to most scholars, with the only surviving archives being watched after at the Vatican Central Library in Rome. The Church guards that knowledge zealously, for fear of brother once again falling upon brother in a pogrom of violence and hate. Human society can ill afford another such lapse._

_What is known, however, is that once the war was joined, it was adamant and perpetual. All of the Progenitor s advancements had been developed, at one point or another, from man's longing to be able to inflict horrific injury and death upon his enemies. All such weapons and practices were brought into play in the Great War. Entire cities were vaporized by air-bursting atomics and entire swaths of the great megatropoli and arcologies were sterilized of all life by way of viral weapon bombardment. Overnight, the human population was quartered._

_The survivors of the opening strokes of the war emerged from their shelters and sought revenge for their lost brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers. The plains of Gahanna, where they met in war, sang with the sounds of their struggles and the deaths of untold millions. War machines of forbidden construction marched through seas of men in armor as lasbeams, multiphasic projectiles and bullets screamed the end of man. The desert lands of Gahanna were never as well watered as they were with the blood of the dead._

_The governments of the Progenitors, all of them bent on the destruction of their counterparts, ended up destroying themselves by the attrition of war. The Light of Man threatened to be extinguished for good in the dark of our hate. It was then that The Church stepped in to Shepard those who had managed to survive. Filling the void left by the genocidal governments and supported by the founders of the Great Houses, The Church secured the lost stockpiles of Technoarcana and removed their temptation from the eyes of the common man. Announcing that it was impurity which had brought about the end of the Progenitors, The Church re-established the long abolished institution of the Inquisition, whose job it was to spread word of the Church Reformation and to stamp out the multitude of heretical sects which had taken root during the times of waning Church power. Additionally, the ornamental Swiss Guard was re-organized into the legionary strength of the God's Hand. They were provided with the pinnacle of the technology of the Progenitors, the better to assert The Church's consecrated rule. _

_Despite its restored power, The Church recognized that it could not Shepard its entire flock by itself. To this end, the Great Houses were established through Papal edict. The surviving arcologies and megatropoli, as well as towns and villages, were divided into five equal 'wards,' one ward for each of the Great Houses to govern under the name of The Church. Limited access to the Lost Technoarcana of the Progenitors was granted, to better facilitate their rule. Each House was permitted a Guard corp. and was responsible for the overseeing of law and justice in their respective wards; the Houses were to remain autonomous inside of their own borders and could do as they pleased. In addition, they were to render any service to the agents of The Church that they may require, without question. _

_The Ecclesiarch of The Church knew that before long, man's baser tendencies would reveal themselves and the Great Houses would seek power for themselves. To this end, the Papacy established The Council of the Houses, where each House would seek to find the favor of The Church and the technology is controlled. In doing so, they would be allowed to expand their holdings while remaining under the control of Rome. The plan worked, with the Great Houses fighting amongst themselves in a series of shadow wars, open warfare forever being a proscribed practice unless given Papal consent. _

_The new system quietly and efficiently re-established a vestige of civilization over the surviving urban lands. The smaller towns and villages were, for the most part, left to fend for themselves. The God's Hand stood ready to deliver the mercy of The Church to any the Ecclesiarches thought required it, and roving Inquisitors sought out the hold-over heresies which went by the names of Mormonism, Anglicanism and others..."_

* * *

_Joss yawned, tired, and tucked the softly talking Primer under the cover of her poster bed as her father walked in from the hall. The periwinkle blanket lying on her bed crinkled and distended as he sat down at her feet, running his rough, callused fingers through her soft, downy little girl hair and smiled. Joss smiled back; she always liked having him back from the Field, as she heard her mother call it. It made her feel safer, more protected. Reaching one arm under her sheets, he pulled out her still-narrating Primer and flipped its pages, the soft mechanical voice starting and stopping in hitches as it began to read a page only to have him turn to the next._

_"How are you, vesper?" He smiled; the words washed over her with a hint of the gunpowder and outdoors smell she would always associate with him._

_"I'm fine, father. I was just reading the Primer and reviewing the Reformation of The Church and the glorious creation of the Great Houses." Joss chirped excitedly, all thoughts of sleep driven from her. Her father frowned slightly._

_"'Glorious creation of the Great Houses?' Since when do you speak like that? You've been spending too much time around your mother, I think." The frown deepened for a moment and then disappeared back into his bushy moustache. "So it would be your mother who has you reading Primers?" _

_Joss fidgeted nervously, smoothing her nightgown over her flat chest. "Yes, she says they will teach me everything I need to know to one day run House Tanhausser. Or at least until I find a husband to help me." Joss grimaced, the idea of marrying a dreadful proposition. The boy-children of the other Great Houses always acted so patronizing at the galas. _

_"They'll teach you everything you need to know, she says? Interesting." Her father's smile was gone, having pulled back into his moustache to keep the frown company; a look of thoughtfulness took its place. "Did it teach you that people in the arcologies murder, rape, steal and defy The Church? That all the Great Houses, excluding our own, would destroy the Church without a second thought should they ever get the opportunity?"_

_"No, daddy."_

_"Did it teach you that you may one day have to turn against even people you consider friends to preserve your that which matters most to you, to do what is right?" At this, Joss knew he was referring to the equerry she had caught stealing from the House armory the week before._

_"No, daddy, but it does teach me about human evils."_

_"Human evil is a good lesson, baby girl. What this Primer teaches you, Joss, is obvious evil. Too obvious to be of use. Turning over a friend in order the save a greater number of lives – now that has the right amount of subtlety to it," her father continued, his voice drifting lazily past her ears._

_"Listen to me closely, vesper: the difference between the stupid and the intelligent is that the intelligent can handle subtlety. They are not confused or turned-about by cryptic or enigmatic situations. In fact, many intelligent people are likely to become suspicious if things seem too obvious and straight-forward."_

_"Your Primers will make you highly educated, Jocelyn, but they cannot, and will never, make you intelligent. Intelligence comes from life. It cannot be said that your education has been lacking, my love; it hasn't been, you're the sole child of a Great House. What you need now is experience to reinforce that education. With that experience, you will be not only educated, but intelligent, and ruling House Tanhausser requires intelligence more than anything else."_

_Joss blinked, confused, "Daddy, I—"_

_"One more thing, baby, and then I want you to put your Primer away and go to sleep." Her father smoothed the blanket on either side of him with his large hands, watching the wrinkles disappear into the rich material. "One day, when you're grown or close to it, you will be sent from this House to gain that experience. It will be scary and it will be difficult, for fear and hardship are two of the few things the world outside has in abundance. Your exile won't be for long, vesper, and it's no punishment. It's designed to help you appreciate the role you play in this world and the responsibility you bear." Her father laughed, his white teeth shining like stars in the night of his skin, "May The Church help the man who takes your hand in marriage, for he will have his hands full!"_

_Leaning forwards and placing his cool forehead against her own, he gave her a hard look that ended in a conspiratorial wink. "Don't tell your mother about this conversation we're having, Jocelyn Geneva Tanhausser. There are just some things that don't need to be spread. Sweet dreams." Kissing her on the forehead, he stood up and walked out of the room, cautiously dousing the rare electric-filament light on her nightstand. Joss watched him leave and then wrapped her blankets around her like a cocoon and rolled over, drifting off to a dreamless sleep._

* * *

Joss awoke with a start, her booted foot kicking into the dying embers of their campfire, knocking sullenly burning embers away into the surrounding night. Gideon was sprawled out on the other side of the fire, his vest balled under his head as a pillow. The two horses grazed contentedly to her side as she willed her shaking hands to calmness. It had been years since she'd dreamed about her father, killed so long ago by an assassin's bullet as he addressed The Council of the Great Houses. Now her she was, in the middle of the Hollywood Desert with a wanted killer, and all to get that experience her father had spoken to her of so long ago.

Was it worth it?

Curling her knees up to her chest and hugging them tightly, Joss rocked herself in the cool heat of the deceased campfire until the sun crested the far off mountains and painted the sky in cheerful pastels.


End file.
